


Motherflerken

by upriserseven



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Carol & Monica reference only, Carol/Maria reference only, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 22:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18127046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/upriserseven/pseuds/upriserseven
Summary: Instead, she does her best Fury impression (because really, she and Talos have done them a lot over the years and she knows hers is pretty good). “’Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye?’ you’ve really said those words? Guys, please, pretty please tell me all the theories you know about his eye. I need to hear them.”





	Motherflerken

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what this is other than I _know_ it's not great but this idea won't leave me alone so I had to make it happen. 
> 
> Also, I somehow wrote no fic for two years and then two fics in two days so, let's all thank Carol Danvers for being the only muse I needed.

Carol is laughing so hard she’s almost choking, and she knows from each expression facing her from around the table that they, the _Avengers_ , can’t quite decide what to make of her, but every time she tries to calm down it hits her again. It’s Fury’s glare, somehow more powerful than when he had both eyes to glare with, that eventually evens her breathing.

“I’m sorry but that’s hilarious, _Nicholas._ ” She sees the eyebrows raised around the table but she can’t look at them, knowing she’ll just start up again. Instead, she does her best Fury impression (because really, she and Talos have done them a lot over the years and she knows hers is pretty good). “’Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye?’ you’ve really said those words? Guys, please, pretty please tell me all the theories you know about his eye. I need to hear them.”

It’s ridiculous and Carol knows it’s childish, but things have been so heavy and so charged and awful that now that they’ve done their job, they’ve saved the world and stopped the bad guy, she needs to laugh at this and she needs to be reminded that C-53, that _Earth_ , is good. So she sits there, and she listens to theories that range from the Kree burning it out, to the perfectly aimed weapons of enemies she guesses she missed out on and she remembers just how much she liked Fury to begin with. He’s older now, _everyone_ is older now, except her, and he’s slightly more bitter and she knows he’s been through some shit. If his rapport, or lack thereof, with the Avengers tells her anything, it’s that Nicholas Joseph Fury isn’t the same man she left here all those years ago, and she knows it has very little do to with the snap. He still smiles at her, though, and she hopes that maybe her being here, however long she’s going to be here for, might help soften him a little. She hopes he wouldn’t be too mad that she’s been back to Earth a lot since 1995, but she suspects he already knows.

“So how did it happen?” She doesn’t know who asks her but whoever it is has barely finished their question before Fury half-whines.

“ _She_ wasn’t even there!”

“ _She_ was saving your planet from total destruction.” She laughs again because it’s easy to forget, actually, that she wasn’t there when it happened. She’s heard the story so many times, from Talos, from Soren, from _Maria_ , that it sometimes feels like her own memory. She heard it whispered, the night it happened, and in time she’s heard it a thousand different ways. There or not, she certainly knows it wasn’t as dark and dramatic as Fury likes to make out, but she sees why he tried.

“You sure you don’t have anywhere to be, Danvers?” He smirks at her as the words leave his mouth, and she’s very aware of how the rest of the group are so damn confused by them, like they can’t possibly believe Fury has ever had a friend.

“Nope.” She pops the p, and somehow she knows it’ll equal parts frustrate him and turn his smirk into a full blown grin. “I’m waiting for my ride.”

“You’re _waiting_ for your _ride_?”

“I am.”

“And who, exactly, is your ride?”

“Take a guess.” She cocks an eyebrow at him and the way he’s looking at her has changed, just a little, and she doesn’t know how to feel about being unable to work him out, so she just continues. “I’m supposed to invite you, actually, but I’m not sure how you’d feel about, uh, _trusting_ the invite.”

“Too late. Your kid already invited me.” And that, well that catches her off guard.

“My kid?”

“Yeah, you know, your kid? Bout 5’6, dark hair, looks about 5 years older than you?”

“ _My_ kid?”

“Yes, Danvers. _Your_ kid.”

She doesn’t know how long he’s known, and she doesn’t really know if he’s been in touch with them this whole time. She’s briefly ashamed to realise that in all of her visits back with her family, she’d never really asked about him. If there was anything bad, he would’ve called her, he _did_ call her, so maybe she tucked him away in the back of her mind. She knows now she was kept much nearer the front of his, and she feels like a shitty friend and it reminds her of that night in 1995, feeling like crap because while she’d wondered if her life before Hala included people, she’d never really wondered if those people were okay.

“Well, then. Seeing as we both know my kid is impossible to say no to, I guess we’re having family dinner.”

It’s fine, with the Avengers (she still can’t believe that’s the name he gave them, remembers Maria telling her a few years ago with something like pride in her eyes while Carol just laughed), but it’s not family. She can work with them, she even cared what happened to them, when it came down to it. She protected them, but that’s the military training, the desire to protect no matter what, it’s not from the heart. It’s not like them, like her family.

And thank whatever there is to thank that they’d been okay, because as _goddamn Captain America_ had explained to her what was happening, the snap and the fucking little piles of dust and ash across the universe, she’d only half-listened before she stopped him.

_“Listen. I’m here. I’ll help. I’ll do this. Fury” she’d choked on his name a little, and maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise but it was, “Fury knew you needed me, so I’m here. But I… I need to check on my family first. I need to know.”_

_The look on his face, on all of their faces really, told her they understood, and she wondered just how many of them should be in this room with her right now._

_“Where are they based?”_

_“Maria’s in Louisiana. But Monica, Monica should be here, I think. Rambeau.” Someone asked her to spell it and she did, but it’s only half a second before she remembered that she can just call them, because people always, always have phones on them now and she knows those numbers off by heart even when she rarely has any use for them._

_She didn’t realise her chest was tight until she heard Maria’s voice, and when she’d heard that Monica was safe too, she hadn’t really meant to say “I love you both so much” in front of this group of strangers (because she still doesn’t know if she’ll ever get used to that being safe), but it’s what she’d done and it cleared her mind enough to jump-start a plan the second she hung up._

“Am I family now?”

“Haven’t you always been?”

The phone she’s been given vibrates in her pocket, and she realises just how much she’s loved the ability to be in constant contact with her girls when she sees the message from Monica.

_Almost there, Mama. Meet us outside in 10?_

“Better get going. _My kid_ is here.” Maybe, just maybe, she loves saying that. She’s tempted to throw in a “my wife, too”, but she doesn’t want Fury repeating it with raised eyebrows all night, so she doesn’t. She thinks it, though. She thinks it a lot.

It’s only when he’s half out the door, and she realises he can’t stop her that she turns back to the crew around the table.

“Oh, his eye? Did, uh, did any of you ever meet Fury’s cat?”

“His cat?”

“Yeah, Goose?”

“That little ginger thing?”

“Yup.” She pops the p again, and gestures vaguely towards her own eyes before turning and speeding off down the hall. It’s childish, but she’s about to spend an evening with her family and she feels free, so she doesn’t even try to stop herself from laughing when she hears him yelling behind her.

“It’s a motherfu- it’s a flerken.”


End file.
